Net income available to common shareholders at First Niagara Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: FNFG) totaled $54.8 million in the first quarter, up from $44.9 million a year earlier.
The banking company earned 16 cents a share for the period, down from 22 cents a share a year earlier. Operating income, which excludes acquisition costs and restructuring charges, totaled $70.1 million, up from $49.8 million.
“Our results again reflect the benefits of our continuing focus on deepening and expanding customer relationships across the footprint,” First Niagara President and CEO John Koelmel said in a news release. “Our relationship-based banking model again enabled us to increase both our share of market and wallet and further strengthen valuable customer relationships everywhere we do business.
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“The outcomes are all the more notable as our team also prepares to put First Niagara’s successful model to work on an even greater scale when we complete and convert the HSBC branch transaction in less than 30 days.”
First Niagara, based in Buffalo, expects to complete its planned acquisition of 195 HSBC Bank branches on May 18.
Adding the HSBC branches, located in upstate New York, Westchester County, and Connecticut will make Buffalo–based First Niagara a major force in the Syracuse, Utica, and Binghamton markets.
When the deal is complete, First Niagara will have nearly 430 branches, $30 billion in deposits, $38 billion in assets, and more than 6,000 employees in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
The acquisition will virtually double First Niagara’s New York branch network to more than 200 locations and add more than 1,200 employees to its workforce.
For more on this story, see the April 27 issue of The Central New York Business Journal.
Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com


